Af­ter Maya, Pawar Blames Cong for NCP’s Dis­mal Per­for­mance

There was anti-Congress mood through­out the coun­try and that even hurt its al­lies: NCP chief was de­feated ev­ery­one told her that the party would never be able to come back to power for the next 20 years, but she said that we should go among the people and she came back to power in two years,” he said. Con­tin­u­ing his at­tack on the Congress but with­out nam­ing it, Pawar said, “Talks on seat ad­just­ment and seat dis­tri­bu­tion got pro­longed be­tween us and our ally. They in­sisted that we con­test fewer seats as we had won fewer seats. In as­sem­bly elec­tions, we should also in­sist on the same logic.” How­ever, the NCP chief also took on his party mem­bers, no­tably his nephew and deputy chief min­is­ter Ajit Pawar, say­ing with­out nam­ing him that both the lead­ers and the cadres should be care­ful about how they be­have and talk with people, and that there should be no vul­gar dis­play of wealth. Sharad Pawar has blamed his Na­tion­al­ist Congress Party’s dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance in the Lok Sabha polls on the anger of the people against the Congress and promised large-scale cor­rec­tives while tak­ing pot­shots at his al­liance leader for its seem­ing in­abil­ity for change. “There was an anti-Congress mood through­out the coun­try and that even hurt its al­lies,” the NCP chief told his party mem­bers at the end of a two­day meet in Mum­bai. BSP chief Mayawati, whose party lent out­side sup­port to the Congress-led United Pro­gres­sive Al­liance govern­ment, had ear­lier sim­i­larly blamed the Congress for her party’s rout. With­out nam­ing the Congress, where hushed ques­tions on Nehru-Gandhi scion

Pawar also vowed to re­spond to the re­sults of the elec­tions. “We will do large-scale changes. There will be change in the lead­er­ship in dif­fer­ent lev­els in the party. We will in­duct new faces and give young­sters, women and mi­nori­ties op­por­tu­ni­ties to con­test these elec­tions,” Pawar said.

Se­nior NCP lead­ers Praful Pa­tel, Chag­gan Bhu­jbal and Sunil Tatkare lost the polls and the party’s tally came down to six from eight the last time round. Pawar ap­peared to be re­as­sur­ing his col­leagues that the party could still bounce back in the as­sem­bly polls due in Oc­to­ber.